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I remember back in the 90s PC mags had the same issues, simple numerical ratings don’t mean shit.
The only score I follow is Steams user satisfies rating thing. the top voted complaints or praises tell me more about the state of a game than anything else ever could.
the advtage the steam system has is first the bought game/gifted game situation, as well as the more important factor, the recent opinion score, as at amy given momemt a game can get good because of a major change (e. g payday 2 reverting all the pay 2 win content the original publisher mandated) or gone to shit because of greed or a bad patch.
the problem users have is finding a curator that has a similar taste in games that they do. If I was a fan of JRPGs, im not going to care about the opinion on some person who doesnt really play jrpgs. at the same time, if you like some niche genre, to the general public, that niche is always less popular, so itll get worse ratings thanit should compared to people who enjoy said niche.
It's a useful place to find out if something totally sucks though. That's how I use it. 60+? Probably good, at least for some audiences. Less than that? Only if you're already hyped or a fan of whatever thing it's related to.
Yeah I mean ratings are giving you an idea of whether there's a chance you like that game. The higher the rating, the higher the chance. But there's always a bit of chance involved.
I tend to buy highly rated games much more often, but if I really am hyped for a game with an OK rating, I still might give it a go. You never know if it will hit your specific niche.
Yep typical ratings are oriented relative to the "average" consumer. But no person is actually THE average.
That's very well put
People like to simplify things and a number is really simple. It's not a lossless simplification tho.
I prefer the steam reviews and check that the guy reviewing has enough hours played.
Gotta be careful with that even, people go out of their way to artificially inflate their play time and use third party programs to unlock achievements.
I can't remember ever having used meta critic to guide a purchase. There is so much content both from forums and YouTube/Twitch that gives you much more accurate impressions of games. Meta critic seems rather pointless nowadays.
I ignore game reviews and buy based off watching the trailer and reading the steam reviews. If I don't like the game in 2 hours I'll refund it.
Well if I only have time to play a game a month, I'm not gonna play a 6/10 game. I'm not saying to blindly trust metacritic but when you seldom play games you need to filter them aggressively somehow.
In 99% of the situations, i couldn't care less what the metacritic score is. Reviewers can be paid, publications can be biased and/or tired, and in general, a lot of the scores don't actually represent how real players feel.
This is especially obvious, when reviewing longer games, or specifically MMOs. You cannot rank that after playing for 10 hours.
My first stop for reviews is always my friends. Based on their general recommendations, i frequently find incredibly fun games, that are otherwise unimpressive at first glance
It's kind of wild that I've seen trailers and posts for Lollipop Chainsaw's remaster, but the first time I hear about a Shadows of the Damned remaster is buried in the last paragraph of a dev interview.
I agree. I have so many games in my backlog that using this method has worked to keep myself under control lol
For sure. You're better off finding YouTubers in a given space, skim a few videos, and subbing to someone with similar opinions.
Games are like food. Everyone in the world can give a place 10/10 but if they use too much of an ingredient you didn't like who cares?
Youtubers, nah, they've got bills to pay and won't ever bite the hand that feeds.
Steam reviews are probably the least biased.